


when i've been static for too long

by remnantof



Series: T/Jverse [2]
Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Blow Jobs, Crying, Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Interracial Relationship, Intersectionality, M/M, Other, Queer Themes, Religious Themes & References, Sequel, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remnantof/pseuds/remnantof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Established Tim/Jaime, hurt/comfort.  After the argument in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/198784"> by </a><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/just_peachy">just_peachy</a>, Tim and Jaime meet at a motel to discuss what happened, and realize just how difficult their relationship is going to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when i've been static for too long

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from tumblr by the author
> 
> again, thanks to peaches for beta duties and writing the amazing originating fic.

He’s such an idiot.

Tim presses the heels of his hands to his eyes until the afternoon sun cuts spots through his vision, blinks to clear them and shakes himself awake as he stands. Stops sitting in Jaime’s back yard waiting for him to follow, fix—whatever just happened. Whatever just broke. Tim doesn’t know. He wasn’t lying when he said he was tired, even if he wasn’t telling much of the truth, either.

 _Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it._

Idiot.

He’d come here so Jaime could find him, but Jaime can always find him. Sat here brooding through every minute of silence, every minute a car didn’t pull up and the Blue Beetle didn’t fly over, every time his phone didn’t go off. Why would it though, why would any of that happen today? Jaime’s with his family, Jaime’s there for his sister, and Tim shouldn’t have come. Or Jaime shouldn’t have invited him, or—

Stop. Breathe. Use the gate out of the yard instead of jumping the fence, or going through the house. What the fuck is he doing here anyway, what the fuck is wrong with him?

The bike is two blocks away, and they pass in a blur of lawns and dry wind and the pavement under his feet, the pavement behind his phone as he tries to text his boyfriend, tries to say a lot without saying much at all. _I’m sorry, I’m taking the bike home. Catch me if you still want to talk._

Catch me. Meet me halfway from you and wherever I’m running. Every time.

It’s okay if he doesn’t, Tim thinks—tells himself—as he disappears behind his helmet and shrugs a sun-hot jacket on. It burns a little against his skin.

That’s okay too.

-

Texas is a big state, and the ride is starting to go from therapeutic to exhausting when Tim passes through Odessa on the 20; passes Big Spring into a clear night and almost doesn’t hear or feel his phone going off. It’s ridiculous and somehow fitting to switch over to the communicator in his helmet, to talk to Jaime over a secure line, but Jaime saying _where are you_ through it hits his body like one of the stimulants he sometimes uses on patrol. Small scale validation like he never doubted Jaime would call, like he wasn’t hugging the ground and speeding over long stretches just to have something else to think about.

Should have thought about it more, because Jaime wants to talk. “And not over this, Tim, not while you’re driving.” He’s a good boyfriend: he worries. Tim’s chest hurts and it makes him say okay, I’ll find somewhere to stop. Somewhere is doubling back to a Super 8 Motel and waiting behind the building for Jaime to land. How close was he, how fast did he travel? Tim has been driving for six hours, Jaime probably waited until after dinner to follow.

Tim has a moment, a little, significant moment, where he hopes things got better after he left and realizes they probably never got that bad while he was there. Not for the people the party was for, and not for Jaime. He’s trying to work that out when Jaime lands, when he waits for Tim to take off the helmet and start—whatever they’re about to do. When he sighs and climbs on the back of the bike, hugs Tim more than he’s holding on and they ride into the rest stop together. Two guys on a flashy bike pulling into a motel, in the middle of Texas. Tim’s head swims a little in the tank of his helmet, and he parks by a bench a ways from the other vehicles, a ways from the rooms, and is quick getting off the bike. Getting away from Jaime’s arms.

Jaime looks lost and his face is all shade for a moment, the ugly feeling from the party. Tim looks like nothing, like a robot, a flat dark visor and red helmet to match his red jacket. Like he’s made of plastic or hiding in his own armor until he clicks the helmet open and pulls it off, shakes his hair out. Motions to the bench and sets the helmet on the seat. It’s chilly in the dark, and the jacket scarab made for Jaime almost matches Tim’s.

All that blue. Tim thinks about Nightwing and Ted Kord, kryptonite and power rings. Blue protects, blue is hope—and their apologies run into and all over each other when they both try to speak first. Jaime laughs, but it’s dry and nervous, dies quickly and he just tells Tim to sit down.

“You already apologized,” he says, and he looks happier but it doesn’t seem real.

“I sent a text message, that’s not the same.”

“That’s what I was going to do. Probably.” Jaime looks away and his mouth tugs up then down, the muscles in his jaw and neck move a little and Tim watches them, but he’s watching everything else too. The doors in rows around the parking lot. The lights in the lobby. The cars. The people smoking by each of these things, or just talking, trying to find out how much attention they’re being paid. It feels like he’s always doing that, and maybe right now it’s good. He won’t shout at Jaime again, because he doesn’t think he can deal with eyes on him any more today. Sometimes all the distance, all the texts and emails, the conversations on secure lines—those are good things. Tim likes them more than he probably should, especially when all of that didn’t work for Traci.

Or Traci didn’t work for those things. He doesn’t know, he never really asks. Except he wants to ask now. “They knew Traci,” he says, picking his feet up and putting them on the bench too, hugging his legs and taking up no space at all. Jaime looks back at him and away again, back again, down. Tim’s making him uncomfortable and thinking _good_ , but it’s not good, right? Is that how Jaime felt when Tim went to the farthest table? Is it how he felt when Tim left?

It’s a mean thing to feel, he thinks, but he’s just sorry, if he made Jaime feel it. Even if they knew Traci, even if they missed her. “I took her to some of those parties, they met her.” Jaime keeps frowning though, not like he’s remembering but like he’s got things of his own to say now. Tim watches him bunch up the denim on his thighs and pinch it with his hands, wonders if there’s sweat on his palms. Wants to ask why the scarab doesn’t just make him sweatpants for real and make Jaime look at him sideways and shake his head for a different reason, but he just waits for it. He’s listening now. “She didn’t just sit at a table, Tim.”

Okay, he’s listening and getting mad again, face heating and he hugs his legs tighter. He’s strong enough he can make it hurt, but Jaime’s sitting right there. And he doesn’t know why he’d want to do that anyway, like wanting to jump the fence or break into the house. Or let Jaime’s cousins call him faggot by not letting anyone know he can understand them.

He was by himself until Jaime came over with the food. Maybe that’s his fault though, because there was Milagro, and Jaime’s parents, and Brenda and Paco were coming later—but. He wasn’t lying about being tired. “I’m sorry,” he says again, this time by himself, so it doesn’t get lost in anything else. I’m sorry and he lets Jaime touch his elbow until he lets go, lets Jaime hold his hand and squeeze, but not really. Not for more than a second before he pulls it away, all the men smoking by their rooms, all the women looking for things in the car. Every room, a man and a woman, and another, and another, and some children, and their suitcases, and their reasons to be here. “Jaime I don’t know why I’m here.”

It takes a minute of Jaime watching him watch everyone else for him to understand that Tim doesn’t mean a Super 8 Motel, maybe means Texas, maybe just means today, the situation. It doesn’t make any more sense and doesn’t give Jaime an answer for him. “Please,” he finally says, when Tim is just watching the people again, hugging himself on a bench, “you have to talk to me. You have to tell me things. Why did you get so mad?”

Why Tim, why is your face hot now like it was then? Why are you tired but not getting up to get a room and sleep it off, why didn’t you take a plane, why didn’t you—why _didn’t_ you break into the house and just wait for Jaime in his room, take a nap. He wouldn’t be mad. Tim could have apologized better, and apologized to Bianca and Alberto, and given Milagro her present in person. “Did Milagro like her bracelet,” he asks, making Jaime stop looking at him again. Because he’s mad and he can’t. Because Tim isn’t talking to him, just like before.

But he is.

“She did, it was really nice. It must have been expensive though, is that why you didn’t put it on the table—”

and how must that look, how much better does Tim see how it looks when Jaime asks it, still angry, getting angrier, because _yes_ , yes and no—

“Jaime.”

“ _What_? Why can’t you—”

answer the question: “What does it mean if I put it on the table. Why am I here Jaime, why did I get Milagro a present? I don’t know, I don’t know so those people won’t know. I can’t tell them.”

Jaime makes a noise like Tim punched him and he hasn’t really felt it yet, swallowing his breath, swallowing what he was feeling and getting lost again. Tim doesn’t feel much better, thinks this is why he doesn’t say it, doesn’t talk. There’s nothing nice to say and if he gets it wrong, or maybe more importantly if he gets it right, if he explains this the right way—everything might break. Jaime might just leave, because he’s going to start to feel it, that punch. “Tim,” he says, the way he sometimes says on missions, says _Robin_ or _Red_ or just looks at Tim like he’s asking him to do something—something terrifying. Something they both know he could do but isn’t sure of, and Tim knows he has to keep going because he’s not asking for anything at all.

He can’t ask it, when he’s sitting in the parking lot watching all the people, pulling his hand away and sitting at the far table. It’s too scary for both of them, even if it’s something they’d survive.

“I couldn’t do it. I was tired Jaime, I told you. They were saying those things and I didn’t want to listen, and you never told me what to tell them. You didn’t even tell them I was there because I was your friend, you just remembered I was there because you needed something.” Now his face is hot _and_ his chest hurts, because he doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to make it sound like Jaime did anything wrong, because he doesn’t know what the right thing is. He’s just—answering the question. Why did he get mad. Was he even mad? “It’s like I’m in this corner, Jaime. It’s like I had to stay there while everyone else was in the rest of the room, and when you came over you were in it too. But I’m always in it Jaime, and you’re in it too when we do this. Otherwise I’m just by myself, and that’s not—I’m not saying you have to fix it. I’m not saying never go back to that room, that’s just how I feel. Jaime that’s how I really feel, so I can’t help with that problem. I don’t have anything nice to say about it.”

He looks at Jaime. Jaime’s starting to feel the punch. Jaime’s…

Jaime’s _crying_. Crying and biting his lip, and looking at Tim with something new on his face, something Tim’s never seen on it before. He didn’t know. He really didn’t know, and Tim feels so terrible, the pain going low into his stomach and squeezing. “I’m sorry, Jaime it’s okay, I’m sorry—”

“No—” Jaime interrupts, wiping at his eyes, trying to stop. “ _I’m_ sorry, I didn’t—Tim why didn’t you tell me before—” but it gets sucked in, sucked under like a wave, like it’s drowning. Jaime can’t say it and has to choke, and Tim will break the jaw of anyone who says _anything_ when he stops being frozen and leans into Jaime, puts his arms around him. Probably not, but it makes him feel better to think it, to know that he could.

There’s a pool behind them. A bench then a fence then a pool, tarps laid over it for the night. Plastic chairs around it reflecting the light, and shadows moving around from the parking lot. Tim turns and gets his head on Jaime’s shoulder, watching the tarps move and slap each other in the breeze, more of that blue, more plastic. Take it all in and make it the background again, close his eyes and hold onto Jaime while Jaime holds onto him, crying because he didn’t know. Because he fucked up, but Tim doesn’t know how he couldn’t have.

Tim fucked up too, and now they’re in the middle of Texas in a parking lot, vending machines and over-bright lights, run down buildings with empty spaces instead of Milagro telling them to kiss and make up like her toys do, instead of Bianca kissing Jaime on the head and offering to make champurrado, instead of Alberto to tell Jaime it’s alright so Jaime will believe it. That’s part of it, the corner in the big room, and never asking Jaime to stay in it with him—he can’t give him those things, he can’t make up for a family. Tim made that decision once and he knows he chose wrong. All he can do is rub Jaime’s back through his jacket, kiss the top of his head, the way Jaime does for him. He learned to do these things from Jaime, and maybe Jaime is thinking of that, remembering that when he stops crying and his breath starts to calm. Maybe Tim can still try to be enough. “It’s not your fault Jaime, I’m not mad anymore. I wasn’t mad,” he says, over and over, until he’s pretty sure it’s true. How does he ever get mad at Jaime, instead of just—taking it out on him? “You were distracted, and I wouldn’t listen. We could have talked at the party but I wouldn’t listen, I’m sorry.”

A little shiver goes from Jaime to Tim, and he takes a big breath, swallows whatever else was coming out. “It’s not okay though, I knew what they were saying. I knew you could understand, and I know you care even when you say you don’t. Aunque tu no, I debe—I should care, Tim. You should at least be able to count on me to care when people do that.” He didn’t swallow it all, it comes out in a rush against Tim’s neck, and it still feels like there’s something wrong when he switches back to English. When he starts to translate it all for Tim like he won’t understand it.

It’s part of that corner, he thinks. The corner where Jaime speaks more English than Spanish and Tim throws out perfectly good food, and Tim doesn’t care about religion because he doesn’t think it exists there. Maybe it should though, because it’s a horrible place but it’s Jaime’s place too. Tim hugs him a little tighter and just feels for a minute, wonders if he could just bleed a little into Jaime, maybe literally, and not have to come up with all the words. Because all he has is, “I count on you to come after me, okay. I’m going to get a room here, and something to drink, just—don’t go anywhere.”

When he walks away, Jaime is lifting his head from staring at his hands to look back at the pool, at the sky, finally taking in what Tim was learning about the place this entire time. Finally waking up to where he is, what it looks like on the ground. Tim turns away and stops looking at him, wants to stop feeling sick inside, sick and mean and something bigger than both of those. Something building up this whole time, since he walked into that park and couldn’t find Jaime, since he got on his bike and ran away. The room is sixty dollars for the night and he has to leave or check back in at two, and Jaime isn’t there so he asks for a single bed, gets two cans of soda from the vending machine—and two bottles of water when the receptionist warns him against the sinks. “Everyone complains about the taste,” he says, handing back Tim’s card with the key.

It sticks in his head and rattles around with the key on its ring, quietly, but it doesn’t mean much to him and he lets it get swallowed into that bad feeling as he walks back to Jaime. Puts the cold can in his hands and leads him to the room. “What about your bike?”

“What about it?”

“It’s a nice bike Tim, what if—” Jaime looks frustrated again, embarrassed. Tim doesn’t know why, feels sick again—sick of not knowing the things on Jaime’s face. “I know,” he says anyway, cutting Jaime off. “I leave it parked in alleys at home Jaime, it’s really hard to steal.”

And he has other bikes. Will always have other bikes. Maybe that’s the problem.

He doesn’t want to fight about it though, not now. He puts the drinks on the bedside table without turning the lights on and lets Jaime close the door, crowds him up against it almost immediately. No one watching now, just flat bars of light through the blinds and Tim kissing Jaime’s face. Feeling the heat of it, his hot cheeks from crying and the salt on them: he takes the can from Jaime’s hand and lifts it up, presses the cool aluminum to Jaime’s cheek and feels him flinch before he lets it happen. Lets the cold pass over his swollen eyes that make Tim want to start crying too. All of it does, but he feels too tired for it. Too twisted up inside like the water or saline can’t get to his head right now, is stuck in his joints and his throat and making them all ache. Ache with the need to touch Jaime, and make him feel better, and for Jaime to touch him until he feels better, aching for _something_.

It feels like all he can do is drop the can to the floor so it rolls away, and push at him. Push his knee up between Jaime’s thighs and they both choke on it, or choke on different things at the same time. Tim doesn’t know, but he wants to. He wants to know if Jaime feels it too, the big terrible feeling, the thing that makes Tim feel so alone when they’re together. Maybe not, maybe only a little of it, because he thinks he’s always felt that way, and it’s how he kisses Jaime too hard, squeezes his wrists just to the point of it hurting, because his wrists hurt right now. His hands hurt like they’re full of poison, from wanting, or crying, or needing. He doesn’t have words for it so he bites Jaime’s throat instead, makes him moan and sink his fingers into Tim’s hips to pull him closer, even though Tim is already so close, trying to crush him against the door. He has to, he has to crush him, it feels like he’s being crushed. Like being underwater and all the pressure bearing down.

There is so much he does now that his body didn’t know how to do, things that didn’t come naturally. He had to learn to fight instead of run, to help instead of watch. Had to learn to kiss and fuck and take but this—this feels natural. To not have the words, to just be sad with his whole body, so his moans are shakier and his breath keeps coming in gasps. So that they’re both shaking from it when he drops to his knees and tugs Jaime’s pants down, _needs_ to suck that cock into his mouth and feel Jaime’s thighs tremble and weaken under his hands. Jaime’s head banging against the door, Jaime’s hands in his hair and Jaime forgetting or trying to forget, when he pulls and says más, más, just a breath of a word and no pares Tim, no pares. So he doesn’t stop, can’t stop, Jaime’s cock pushing his cheek out and spit running down his chin. It doesn’t bother him anymore, he just doesn’t want to feel empty right now, doesn’t want to feel alone, coaxing Jaime to give in to his weak legs and join him on the floor, so Tim can be half in his lap and bobbing his head, sucking him harder. Ruthless and sad and moaning with both, not empty at all really, full of things that hurt to feel but are probably better than nothing at all.

What kind of person would he be not to feel it all, right now? Someone he used to be, someone who didn’t fuck his boyfriend in motels because he didn’t have one. Don’t think about it, don’t let Jaime think about it: go down and hold and suck and clutch his hips too tight with hands too strong for their size, until he’s not sure what Jaime’s hips are bucking for. The heat of his mouth or the pain. And _Tim_ and _I’m_ get swallowed up in the rush of air, the rush that turns in on itself and builds back up. False alarm, Jaime leans his head back against the door and moans, so helpless. With the crush of his lashes over those hot cheeks and his mouth open then closed, trying to find that perfect way to breathe, hold it in long enough to let it all out.

Harder, Tim thinks, drawing off slow, making Jaime shudder before he replaces his mouth with his hand, letting go of Jaime’s hips so he can push up into it, let his body go while Tim kisses his head back against the door and swallows all of the sounds. Maybe someone will walk by, maybe someone will hear and know. Tim always wants them to hear, even if he doesn’t want them to see. If they just hear they can still deny it, and it can hurt them back without anyone getting _hurt_. Hurt them from the inside out, the way this hurts, kissing Jaime softer and slower the more messed up his head gets.

He won’t take it out on him again. He _won’t_. Soft, wet kisses, thorough, counterpoint to the callouses on his hand working Jaime’s cock. Getting him off feels so urgent, like Jaime’s orgasm is his own, like any of this can actually _fix_ anything. Like a blowjob is actually _worth_ all the shit that comes with it. Maybe it is—it’s worth more than Tim is, by himself. “Come on,” he says, following Jaime’s head back and sucking and biting kisses to his throat, mouthing the words around his chin and jaw, little apple-crisp touches of his teeth and his tongue smoothing them back out. “Come on Jaime, come on,” stroking him less now, just letting Jaime fuck his hand at his own pace, until it loses step and goes desperate, Jaime biting his lip, face all pinched together until it happens—and then it’s all open, looking back at Tim until the eyes roll back and Jaime has to swallow, learn to breathe again.

And Tim kisses that too, soaks it up against the sadness and starts to feel like his body was made for other things, other feelings, when Jaime gets himself back and kisses Tim down onto the floor, shifts around in his lap until Tim needs more than that. Until the feeling starts to pour out of him like water and he gets lost, gets empty again, room for other kinds of sadness and it’s another terrible thing, how radical it is to choose something else. To want to fill it up with Jaime instead, the least logical thing when there’d be nothing to struggle against if he just stopped fucking him.

Sometimes it feels good to struggle, though. Struggle against Jaime until sex is a slow burn through his whole body, until he’s thrashed his way out of his clothes and Jaime pins him, says his name over and over. Slow and nice, he’s so _nice_ , Tim doesn’t know how or why he always ends up dating the kindest people he knows. Maybe he’s a charity case, maybe he’s their test, their punishment. Maybe Jaime just likes the taste of himself in Tim’s mouth and the way Tim is always a little surprised, a little awed by how good Jaime’s hand on his cock feels.

Maybe Jaime just wants to do this, _is_ doing this, even as Tim feels it all come back at him through Jaime, feels that same needy ache in the way Jaime’s hands move, the way they squeeze and stroke. See it in the way he can’t even open his eyes to look, because—because they’re in a motel room, on the floor, and it’s not the first time but it’s the first time it’s made so much _sense_ , for making no sense at all.

What they feel right now doesn’t belong in a motel room, or a corner.

It probably can’t survive in them.

Tim shudders and his climax feels anticlimactic in the face of all that build, just weak noises against Jaime’s open mouth, panting all over each other and the bad feeling rushing back in like a tide. Tim doesn’t know how he’s going to get up, it’s come in and covered him and if he lets it, it will hold him down.

Sometimes struggling is just what you have to do. To his feet, with Jaime’s help, and out of their clothes, and into the bed. Sharing the soda that didn’t roll off somewhere and drinking bottled water until they feel like people again, watching each other. Watching the transformation, wary of who they’ll be sitting next to when it’s over. Tim gets his fingers wet and trails cool water over Jaime’s eyes, hates how fragile he looks when he blinks them open again, water starring his lashes and easing the itch. I’m sorry sits at the tip of his tongue but he’s afraid to say it again, start that again. Jaime might keep crying or Tim might start. He slips under the gold comforter instead, thick and cool in the air conditioned room, and Jaime follows like he’s not ready to think for himself, has to take cues.

Tim had to learn that too, how to lead. How it could be another way to live off other people, be close to them without being _close_. He doesn’t know how to fill himself up without them, after those years alone, the years he spent behind a camera trying to fill his life with faces. Jaime has so many of them in his, and Tim won’t ask to be introduced to them. Faces—people—expect things too. And he isn’t something they expect.

“You can get a whole night of sleep,” Jaime says when they’re settled, limbs tangled under the comforter but bodies apart, compromising. Angled so they can shift together in their sleep, when they get cold. Jaime could be joking, but it seems out of place. He squeezes Tim’s hands, rubs the callouses on them like they’re still a point of interest. “Seriously Tim, if I wake up and you’re not here, I’m flying to Gotham so I can punch you.”

So. He’s staying.

Tim didn’t know he could laugh tonight, but Jaime’s always making him laugh, always trying. “I’d let you, you know.”

“What?”

“Punch me.” And he lets Jaime do it now, lightly on his shoulder, so he’s moving a little as he laughs again. “You better _not_ ,” Jaime warns, shifting a little higher, rubbing his face on the pillow until a sliver of light through the blinds cuts across his mouth instead of his eyes. Tim reaches out to touch it, trace it, until Jaime shivers and tries to bite him. Tim trails the finger down, touches Jaime’s collar. Feels out a question in the hollows of it, in the uninterrupted trails of his skin. Their shirts are on the floor, and the question melts into his head like something he’s been trying to remember. “Milagro got a necklace.”

“I thought you said it was a bracelet?”

“No, from someone else. From your grandmother, she said.” Their abuela, who he’s met a few times, who knows they’re friends, that they’re heroes, even if she doesn’t know which one Tim is. It’s better that way, keep her safe but still get to tell her stories about Jaime, things he’s done with the Titans. She always asks—not about school, not about goals, just her grandson, the hero. Those are the things Jaime is, to her, and it’s one more thing Tim is careful never to break. He should always be those things to her.

Maybe Jaime is thinking about it too, because he’s quiet, quiet enough that Tim stops thinking to listen to his breathing, figure out if he’s asleep. He’s not. “Jaime,” Tim starts anyway, watching his lips draw closer together in a line. “You don’t have one.”

More quiet. More breathing. “I did.”

“I’ve never seen it though—is it. Did you stop wearing it?” Did he stop before he met Tim, before they decided to try this, after? Has Jaime been waiting all this time to talk to Tim, talk to anyone, about this? He feels like an asshole all over again.

“No, I lost it. I lost it that year I was in space.”

Such an asshole. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

It’s quiet again, and he looks away from Jaime’s face, moves his hands over the joints in his fingers, his wrists, little touches that don’t mean anything, that tighten and try to mean something when Jaime says, “I don’t know. A lot happened, I forgot. Then—I don’t know Tim, my mom cried enough over it.”

There’s a file on Jaime in their database, full of coded statements that Tim skims and ignores, occasionally changes. Questions about his maturity, his training, the threat of that much power in the hands of someone unprepared to use it. Tim used to agree with them, used to keep track of Jaime and ask them over and over, but now they’re things he likes. Now they’re part of a person, instead of a resource.

Tim would worry so much more if one of them had the scarab, if anyone but Jaime had it. If _Bruce_ had it, because there’s just a few lines on that incident—just a line about that year and Bruce’s guilt bleeding all over it. _He wasn’t ready_ and _sacrifices_ and how long it took them all to realize they’d lost him. Sometimes Tim makes a point to think of Bruce as his adoptive father, because sometimes he hates him. At least he’s doing that much right, even if he’s getting everything else wrong. Like laying in a motel bed next to his boyfriend, letting a conversation they should have just had earlier go stale and die.

“I can’t believe you even noticed,” Jaime finally says.

“I’m a detective, I detect things.”

Jaime snorts, grapples with Tim’s hands a little until he’s already starting to laugh when Jaime says, “Yeah? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve lost a watch and a small fortune in loose change in our backyard, and I would give you half of it to wander around yelling BEEP for my entertainment. And probably Milagro’s.”

Sometimes it feels good to struggle—sometimes you laugh. Sometimes the corner is a place to laugh in, hold hands in, laugh _at_. Tim will forget that soon, but he is a detective: he notices it now. He hopes Jaime notices it, always sees it that way. Always tries to make him laugh. It won’t be so hard then, and when Jaime stops laughing, stops teasing—when Jaime looks at him and asks, “You’ll be here when I wake up, right?”

It won’t be much of a struggle at all to say _yes_.


End file.
